On the landing, a squeak in the boards drew his eye. Seren Avelle. She passed by, neither slowing nor quickening, her face cleanly neutral. She did not look at Soren, but the angle of her approach put her just close enough for him to catch the micro-crease at the corner of her mouth.

On her way down, she paused, just long enough for her words to thread through a break in Cassian's speech, quiet but audible above the thump of rain.

"He's building his own blade," she murmured, perhaps to herself, perhaps for Soren. "And you're either the whetstone or the test."

Soren let the phrase run through his head a few times before he retreated to the only place that felt decently neutral: the east stairwell, with its draught and perpetual echo of old bell metal. On the descent to sub-basement, the walls tightened and the air grew colder, but at least here there was no audience.

Not tonight.

He woke hours later to darkness so complete he couldn't tell if it was early or late. Soren lay still in bed, listening to the tick of sleet on his window and the distant thunk of boots somewhere above.

Cassian's breathing came even and steady from the bunk across the room, a rhythm that matched the storm's forbearance, never quite pausing, always on the edge of resuming.

Sleep was pointless.

He dressed in silence, binding his hair back and trading his uniform for the colorless gray of "off-record" errand work. The corridor outside was empty, but the air felt dented, as though someone had just passed through and the world hadn't stitched the wound closed yet.

He moved along the route he'd mapped in the first week: up two flights, skip the main balcony, then take the servants' stairs to the northeast corner. This was where Instructor Veyra had left her marks last time, and Soren wanted to see if the ghosts remained.

What he hadn't expected was anyone else.

Ahead, shimmering in the dark, the blue traceries of Veyra's sigil pulsed along three doors. This time, no hand erased them. The light bled downward, pooling on the floor, then crawled along the grout line toward the west hall, as if seeking lower ground.

Soren followed.

He'd thought the marks were just boundaries, but as he tracked them he saw a logic: each was placed at an intersection where either the wind, the sound, or the flow of foot traffic created natural choke points. Every time he blinked, the light flickered, sometimes dimmer, sometimes multiplying.

Three floors below, the blue glow vanished entirely into a seam along the baseboard.

He knelt, tracing the outline with a gloved finger. There, barely wide enough for a coin, a sliver of light emerged from the stone, thinner than air and almost impossible to see in daylight. In the hush of midnight, it looked like a wound in the architecture.

He pressed, gently.

The line pulsed, not brighter but hungrier. Soren pulled his hand back, not from any warning from Valenna, but from the distinct sense of shared trespass. There was nothing overtly magical about it, but the hair along his forearms prickled as if he'd stuck a nail in a live socket.

He straightened, wanting to memorize the route before the feeling faded. The sigils inched along the hall, then dead-ended at the locked cellar door beneath the Spire itself. Here the blue drowned in the joinery, forming a solid, heavy barrier.

Not surveillance, Soren thought. Containment.

He stayed until the numbness in his knees threatened to pin him in place. When he finally let himself turn away, Valenna's voice arrived, a needle threading carefully through his sinuses:

"You stand on a cage. Not for beasts. For gods."

Her presence this time was not cold, but keen, almost contradicting the rain outside, as if the humidity itself were an argument against how thin the veil here had grown.

By morning, the blue had gone, every trace scrubbed and polished away. Only the faint tang of ozone and wet stone remained, and the feeling that the building itself had shifted in the night.

Soren reported to the Hall of Mirrors as scheduled, and when he caught his own reflection in the metal tiles it looked, for a moment, like the sky in winter: too many layers, none of them quite overlapping.

If Dane and Veyra and the city beyond all saw themselves in mirrors, then maybe he could survive here by becoming the one thing every reflection hated:

An absence.

It was just a matter of holding still when the surface shimmered.

That afternoon, the rain slackened to an almost gentle drizzle, the air in the lecture chambers warm and prickly from the insulation of ninety wet bodies pressed together for Ethics and Doctrine.

Professor Ohn entered in a trail of cold air, her slate robe beading moisture onto the steps. She surveyed the benches with a kind of bored omnipotence before launching into the lesson.

"Today we discuss limits," she began. "Not theoretical—practical." She wrote the word on the board and underlined it. "What line, internal or external, do you know you cannot cross?"

The recitation started. Responses ranged from the academic "never strike a superior" to the moral "do not kill a foe who has yielded" to the expected bravado "do whatever is required for victory". Cassian's answer, "well, I suppose it would be refusing an unfair duel, but I don't believe in unfair duels", earned laughs and a point for wit. The painted smile on his face never changed, but the eyes searched the benches for reactions the whole time.

When Soren's turn came, he kept to the textbook: "Breach of Oath is the only line that matters here."

Ohn made a note, nothing more, but the pen dug deep into the paper.

Afterwards, Soren drifted to the common, only to find Cassian already ensconced, this time reading alone by the fire, deliberately, Soren guessed, putting on the air of someone who didn't need an audience every minute.

Cassian glanced up, then patted the seat beside him. "You're becoming a legend, Vale. It's not even midterm." He closed his book, but left one finger marking his place.

Soren sat, hands in pockets. "You plan to challenge me again?"

Cassian's laugh this time was real, not performative. "No. I've realized what you are. You're what the rest of us use as an excuse to escalate." He leaned in, voice lowered so only Soren could hear: "What's in the vault under the Spire?"

Soren kept his face blank. "You tell me."

Cassian's silver-blond hair, disordered for once, fell into his eye. He smirked. "If I knew, I'd own this place."

Soren didn't answer.

Cassian leaned back, smile erased. "Here's the thing, Vale, I'm not asking because I want to beat you. I want to know if the rumors are true: that the Academy is less a school and more a, what's the word, containment unit. For the real weapons."

Soren said, "What's the difference?"

Cassian pondered, then stood up. "Let me know if you figure it out, will you?" He took his book and left, not looking back.

After a while, Soren realized her eyes had been on him the whole time. Seren sat in the far corner, reading nothing, her hands folded in her lap. She made no sign or gesture, just the barest nod as he caught her gaze. It felt, unexpectedly, like allyship.

Through the glass, the rain turned to mist.

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